senior national correspondent john roberts live in jackson, georgia, with more. john? >> reporter: good afternoon to you. certainly, the crimes were heinous, he shot his girlfriend 11 times to kill her and then in 1990 bludgeoned that former inmate to death with a board studded with nails. his attorneys argued that he was suffering from mental retardation and should not receive the death penalty. three doctors who were hired by the state disagreed with that saying he was not mentally retarded and during their interviews they thought perhaps he was even faking it. since then, though, those same three doctors have said they were wrong. one of them in an affidavit saying: my judgment that mr. hill did not meet the criteria for mild mental retardation was in error, going on to say that hill has an iq of about 70. back in 2002 the superior court ruled that it was a violation of the eighth amendment, unconstitutional, to put a mentally retarded person to death, and since then many people have come to hill's defense, including the family of his victim that he killed back in 1